Questions for Dr. Doria Shafik

We spoke in the last issue of Dr. Doria Shafik's visit to Beirut, at the invitation of the University Women's Association headed by Dr. Zahia Kaddoura, to deliver a public lecture in the hall of the Ministry of National Education on the subject 'Woman and the Arab Cause.' On the margin of this lecture the magazine The Woman's Voice addressed several questions to her, in her capacity as an Egyptian leader devoted to the welfare of the Arab woman, and in the front rank of those struggling for her emancipation.

Dr. Doria Shafik apologized to the editor-in-chief of this magazine, saying that time did not allow for preparing the answers, and promised, in a written word, that she would 'dispatch' her frank opinion on the subject as soon as she reached Cairo. The days have passed without the awaited answers arriving! The truth is that we are at a loss over our promises to the readers, and we shall be obliged to publish the questions while awaiting the answers to them, as our gracious colleague promised.

Q — You said in your lecture that constitutional rights are the mother of all rights, and in this you avoided touching upon the rights of the religious law. Are you, we wonder, among those who believe that matters of religious law may not be taken up?

Q — Do you not see in certain texts of the religious law a fundamental injustice to woman, one that touches her cause to the quick? What is your opinion of the disparity in inheritance, for example, and of the discounting of a woman's testimony merely because she is a female? And of the man's right to plural wives, and to divorce?

Q — Do you not believe that these questions have their deep and far-reaching effect upon the soul of the Arab woman, and that treating political questions alone is like one who tries to treat the branches while leaving the root?